We arrived in Ethiopia around 9:00 (Sunday, Ethiopian time) in the morning after traveling for what seemed like ages. Our trip began with waking at 3:30am (Saturday, Eastern time) and a VERY early flight to Washington, D.C. I was as nervous as could be driving to the airport, but relaxed some as soon as we got checked in and at the gate. We met a few very sweet people at our gate and chatted until we boarded. I knew that we were in for an emotional trip when one of the ladies whom we had just met handed me a bit of cash to buy something for our daughter because she was so touched by our story. It wasn't even 6am and I was already crying!
We arrived in D.C., had breakfast and walked around the terminal waiting for our friends the Mummert family and the Diaz family to arrive. We were so excited to see the Mummerts again and to actually meet the Diaz family face-to-face since we had only met virtually. Knowing that we were going to experience this part of our journey with these two families was so reassuring to us. Our weeks of emailing each other and talking about preparations were finally coming to a head as we boarded our plane to our children.
The highlight of our travel day (other than meeting up with friends, of course) was seeing Rob Lowe in the airport. Let's just say it was a LONG day of travel. We were definitely hoping to sleep quite a bit on the plane, but each of us only slept a couple of hours, which made the flight seem that much longer. We were thrilled when our plane touched down in Africa!
The driver from our guest house met us at the airport and it was such an amazing feeling to have our feet on Ethiopian soil once again. We checked into our suite with the Mummerts at Yebsabi, and it felt like we were home again. We had high hopes of doing something fun Sunday afternoon, but our goal quickly became to just stay awake so that we would sleep through the night. We were all absolutely exhausted. In fact, we barely made it out to eat at Makush art gallery and restaurant. This was one of our favorite places to eat in Ethiopia. The food was good, and seeing the artwork was cool as well. We made it back to Yebsabi, and Brian and I finally gave up on staying awake and crashed at 7pm and slept like rocks for the whole night. We knew that we would be traveling to pick up Mikayla first thing in the morning!
We only have 3 pictures from our travel day and first day in Ethiopia. They are ALL of Brian on the plane. To be quite honest, we were too tired the entire two days to think of taking pictures, and Brian's face pretty much sums up how we were feeling!
Lessons Learned from this day:
-If the connecting flight to make your international flight is REALLY early in the morning, fly up the night before and stay in a hotel so you are starting the trip well rested.
-Check out carry-on luggage restrictions for specific airlines (especially foreign airlines that might have different regulations). We sat at the gate and totally reorganized our carry-on bags because we learned that we had to check one of them because of size!
-Think about taking something to help with sleep so that you arrive at your destination well rested like the lady sitting next to you that slept for 10 hours out of the 12 hour flight :)
-If you ask for enough refills of water in a short period of time, the flight attendant might have mercy on you and just give you the whole huge bottle of water.
I can't wait to read all your posts this week! Can you believe that it was 6 months ago? The ONLY thing I wish was different was that we got more time with you guys. It was such a whirlwind!
ReplyDeleteYEAH our 3 kiddos have been with us 6 months. :)